Fontsmith develops font solutions for many well-known brands. A unique and distinctive font is integral to a brand’s make up and becomes part of who you are. We design and develop fonts, logos and licencing solutions for customers from all over the world. Our services range from simple advice and support to full bespoke typeface creation. Our typefaces are unique and exclusive to us and our work encompasses everything from traditional to contemporary.

One You

A perfectly paired capital sans and capital script sans for the Public Health England One You campaign.

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Custom font design

Brief

M&C Saatchi were working with Public Health England (PHE) on the the first ever nationwide campaign to address preventable disease in adults: One You. Specifically targeting the over 40’s, the key messages were to drink less, exercise more, eat better and give up smoking. M&C Saatchi’s needed a bespoke typeface to use across all campaign materials and wanted a perfectly paired sans serif caps and script caps to emphasize the messages. The typeface needed to connect with people, and find the right balance between being stylish, genuine and legible.

The client required an open ended licence as the font would not only be used by internal stakeholders but also external partners such as local councils, pharmacies and doctor’s surgeries with third party user numbers upward of 1,000.

Approach

For a government health campaign like this one it was absolutely vital to make the typeface unique so that it would become synonymous with the brand and message. By creating something bespoke for PHE they would have complete ownership and the rights to use it as they wish.

We started with the sans serif caps which was based loosely on FS Dillon, then began work on the complimentary hand drawn script. The two fonts needed to balance each other with a similar presence, but at the same time create the right contrast to command attention. Jason tried several different styles with different paper, pens, inks and brushes on ruled out lines to find the perfect style.

For government bodies and other large disparate organisations traditional font licensing models simply don’t work. It was unknown how many end users would need to use the fonts but a conservative estimate put the pricing into the hundreds of thousands just for desktop licences, webfonts would drive the costs up even more. Our Brandfont® licence was perfect: simple and economical.

Solution

The pair of typefaces compliment each other perfectly to create stand out headlines online and in print. By retaining the rawness and texture of the hand painted images the script text is genuine and warm helping PHE connect with their target audience in a meaningful way.

We supplied a Brandfont® licence that was open ended so all employees could use it as well as partner organisations and suppliers at no additional cost. Self hosted webfonts were also supplied for unrestricted use online, regardless of the number of visitors. This simplified costing method is completely unique and resulted in a huge saving for the client as well as a valuable reduction in administration time and costs.

“We knew pretty much from the outset this was going to be a difficult task. A matched pair of capital fonts, one a big, bold, bloody condensed sans serif, the other a heavy, hand-created brush script font. There really weren’t any off the shelf options available. Doubly complicated, as we knew the font was mainly going to be used white or yellow on a teal background colour. Bespoke it would have to be. The end result is a clean modern take on both font styles, and at the same time absolutely useable for the end users.”